Full Dark, No Stars

“No thanks necessary. You earned every penny.”

Tess did not demur.

“Now. About that shortcut.”

Tess leaned forward attentively. In one of the Knitting Society books, Doreen Marquis had said, The two best things in life are warm croissants and a quick way home. This was a case of the writer using her own dearly held beliefs to enliven her fiction.

“Can you program intersections in your GPS?”

“Yes, Tom’s very canny.”

Ms. Norvil e smiled. “Input Stagg Road and US 47, then. Stagg Road is very little used in this modern age—almost forgotten since that damn 84—but it’s scenic. You’l ramble along it for, oh, sixteen

miles or so. Patched asphalt, but not too bumpy, or wasn’t the last time I took it, and that was in the spring, when the worst bumps show up. At least that’s my experience.”

“Mine, too,” Tess said.

“When you get to 47, you’l see a sign pointing you to I-84, but you’l only need to take the turnpike for twelve miles or so, that’s the beauty part. And you’l save tons of time and aggravation.”

“That’s also the beauty part,” Tess said, and they laughed together, two women of the same mind watched over by a smiling Richard Widmark. The abandoned store with the ticking sign was then stil

ninety minutes away, tucked snugly into the future like a snake in its hole. And the culvert, of course.

- 5 -

Tess not only had a GPS; she had spent extra for a customized one. She liked toys. After she had input the intersection (Ramona Norvil e leaned in the window as she did it, watching with manly

interest), the gadget thought for a moment or two, then said, “Tess, I am calculating your route.”

“Whoa-ho, how about that!” Norvil e said, and laughed the way that people do at some amiable peculiarity.

Tess smiled, although she privately thought programming your GPS to cal you by name was no more peculiar than keeping a fan foto of a dead actor on your office wal . “Thank you for everything,

Ramona. It was al very professional.”

“We do our best at Three Bs. Now off you go. With my thanks.”

“Off I go,” Tess agreed. “And you’re very welcome. I enjoyed it.” This was true; she usual y did enjoy such occasions, in an al -right-let’s-get-this-taken-care-of fashion. And her retirement fund would certainly enjoy the unexpected infusion of cash.

“Have a safe trip home,” Norvil e said, and Tess gave her a thumbs-up.

When she pul ed away, the GPS said, “Hel o, Tess. I see we’re taking a trip.”

“Yes indeed,” she said. “And a good day for it, wouldn’t you say?”

Unlike the computers in science fiction movies, Tom was poorly equipped for light conversation, although Tess sometimes helped him. He told her to make a right turn four hundred yards ahead, then

take her first left. The map on the Tomtom’s screen displayed green arrows and street names, sucking the information down from some whirling metal bal of technology high above.

She was soon on the outskirts of Chicopee, but Tom sent her past the turn for I-84 without comment and into countryside that was flaming with October color and smoky with the scent of burning

leaves. After ten miles or so on something cal ed Old County Road, and just as she was wondering if her GPS had made a mistake (as if), Tom spoke up again.

“In one mile, right turn.”

Sure enough, she soon saw a green Stagg Road sign so pocked with shotgun pel ets it was almost unreadable. But of course, Tom didn’t need signs; in the words of the sociologists (Tess had been

a major before discovering her talent for writing about old lady detectives), he was other-directed.

You’ll ramble along for sixteen miles or so, Ramona Norvil e had said, but Tess rambled for only a dozen. She came around a curve, spied an old dilapidated building ahead on her left (the faded sign over the pumpless service island stil read ESSO), and then saw—too late—several large, splintered pieces of wood scattered across the road. There were rusty nails jutting from many of them. She

jounced across the pothole that had probably dislodged them from some country bumpkin’s carelessly packed load, then veered for the soft shoulder in an effort to get around the litter, knowing she

probably wasn’t going to make it; why else would she hear herself saying Oh-oh?

There was a clack-thump-thud beneath her as chunks of wood flew up against the undercarriage, and then her trusty Expedition began pogoing up and down and pul ing to the left, like a horse that’s gone lame. She wrestled it into the weedy yard of the deserted store, wanting to get it off the road so someone who happened to come tearing around that last curve wouldn’t rear-end her. She hadn’t

seen much traffic on Stagg Road, but there’d been some, including a couple of large trucks.

“Goddam you, Ramona,” she said. She knew it wasn’t real y the librarian’s fault; the head (and probably only member) of The Richard Widmark Fan Appreciation Society, Chicopee Branch, had only